Dominie Roberts, the parish schoolmaster, was a pedagogue of the old
school. And there exist many such in Scotland still.
He would no more think of teaching a class without the tawse in his
hand, than a huntsman would of entering the kennels without his whip.
As my English readers may not know what a "tawse" is, I herewith give
them a recipe for making one.
Take, then, a piece of leather two feet long, and one inch and a half
wide. The leather ought to be the thickest a shoemaker can give you, of
the same sort as he makes the uppers of a navvy's boots with. Now at
one end make a slit or buttonhole to pass two fingers through, and cut
up the other into three tags of equal breadth and about three inches
long.
Then your tawse is complete, or will be so as soon as you have heated
the ends for a short time in the fire to harden them.
It is a fearful instrument of torture, as my experience can testify. It
is not quite so much used in schools now, however, as it was thirty
years ago, when the writer was a boy. But it _is_ still used. Such a
thing as hoisting and flogging, I do not believe, was ever known in a
Scottish school. It would result in mutiny.
You have to hold out your hand. The teacher says "_Pande_" (in Latin).
Then he lets you have it again and again, sometimes till he is out of
breath, and your hands and wrists are all blistered.
I remember receiving six-and-thirty "pandeys," because I had smashed a
tyrant boy who had bullied me for months. It was a cruel injustice; for
the bully got no punishment except that which I had given him.
Dominie Roberts was a pedagogue, then, of this class.
All the boys were afraid of him. Harry was not. Though only eleven
years of age, Harry was nearly as tall as the dominie.
There was a consultation one day as to who should steal the tawse.